Over the weekend, it was announced by Toho Studios that their highly anticipated “Godzilla Minus One” sequel would be titled “Godzilla Minus Zero,” with writer/director/VFX lead Takashi Yamazaki returning after the last installment wowed global audiences, leading to a Best Visual Effects Oscar statue (overtaking movies with staggeringly larger budgets) back in 2024.
The latest Japanese-made Kaiju flick, according to The Hollywood Reporter, could be ready for theaters as soon as next year, which should be exciting for fans of the King of Monsters. Although we’re still going to have to wait for a concrete date, as Toho Studios doesn’t need to plant release flags like their Hollywood counterparts and will likely wait a little longer before making that news public.
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If you’re not familiar with the last installment, it mostly took place post-WWII (a haunting and dramatic setting for a creature feature as many Japanese returned to cities to find their homestead and families simply gone) during the clean-up effort to remove mines left behind from the war in the ocean, only for a monstrous city-destroying threat to emerge from the water, leading an effort from locals to sink Godzilla to the bottom of the ocean, as their weapons are ineffective in stopping the skyscraper-sized beast. Unlike the Hollywood versions, overseen by Legendary, we see a great effort for the human characters and their stories to be just as compelling as the large-scale action sequences made on a much smaller budget than many would have imagined.
“Godzilla Minus One” was made for a modest $15 million and would go on to earn an impressive $113.6 million at the global box office. The genre pic also saw demand from audiences, which led Toho to re-release the film multiple times (a black and white version was part of that return to theaters) and even got a high-profile debut on Netflix.
Yamazaki, the film’s director/writer, has been talking with various Hollywood studios and producers (he has even teased an interest in jumping into the “Star Wars” sandbox), but has decided to focus, for the moment, on his ambitious Kaiju follow-up.
Along with that release tidbit, the outlet states production on “Godzilla Minus Zero” is also expected to be taking place in New Zealand and Norway, so we’re not just looking at scenes being shot exclusively in Japan.
You can watch that brief title announcement teaser for the mysterious “Godzilla Minus Zero” below.
Christopher Marc is lead writer at The Playlist and the primary engine behind our daily news coverage. Chris is based in Canada and tracks everything from Marvel and Star Wars developments to arthouse acquisitions and festival buzz with equal enthusiasm and an instinct for the story readers actually want to read.
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